


I Will Play My Games Beneath the Spinlight

by emissarystilinski



Series: Gangsey Band AU [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M, Gen, M/M, Minor Henry Cheng, Minor Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, band au, gangsey band au nobody asked for, the gangsey, trc drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 03:51:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12203334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emissarystilinski/pseuds/emissarystilinski
Summary: This a Gangsey Band drabble that was too long for Tumblr so have some co-writing, secret relationships, and a side of broken kids.





	I Will Play My Games Beneath the Spinlight

**Author's Note:**

> The fic title and the song they're writing is I Will Play My Games Beneath the Spinlight by Brand New.

“I have the first verse written already and the chorus, thanks to Blue.” She tipped her head to him in the best mock bow she could achieve while sitting on the floor, “I started it back when we did that show in Tucson but I’ve been… distracted so I didn’t write the rest and now I’m blocked.”

Ronan lifted an eyebrow sharply at his pause and obvious gloss over what had been bothering him. Hiding a relationship, if he could call it that, while on tour was much harder than he had anticipated. Gansey hadn’t come clean to them about his feelings for Blue just yet but he was pretty sure that Ronan had figured it out even before the two of them had. That was the thing about Ronan Lynch: he may be a grade A ass hole but he damn well knows how to keep a secret.

“Ok so what do you have so far?” Blue asked, ready to get into problem solving mode, her hair falling in her face as she leaned over his notebook. Her once choppy, uneven bob was growing and it was curling as it lengthened. The red streaks she’d impulsively dyed into it one restless night were fading into the natural dark, chestnut brown but still caught in the light.

Gansey wanted to twirl one of the ringlets around his finger but kept his hands to himself despite the twitch in them.

“So far its starts with: Wrote more postcards than hooks, I read more maps than books.”

Adam snorted a laugh, “Well I can see that we’re back to taking lyrics very, very literally.”

Gansey rolled his eyes but didn’t protest. Adam wasn’t wrong. The whole song was more real than most of the metaphoric writing he was known for contributing now. This felt…. regressive but still them, their folky acoustic sound to lyrics that felt younger. It made sense. Blue had a… deaging effect on him. She made him feel like he was sixteen again, frazzled and frayed just from a moment of eye contact.

Adam strummed out the chords that Gansey had scribbled onto a take out napkin for him while they all sat quiet. Ronan was drumming on his knees as he thought, a habit that infuriated Gansey when he was anxious and comforted him when he was sleepless. They went through the first verse twice before anyone spoke.

“Feel like every chance to leave s’another chance I should’ve took.” Adam hummed to himself, eyes distant while his hands worked.

The silence was pregnant with the memory of Adam’s bruised, fragile features. The court dates and hearings playing on a loop in each other their minds. Gansey had started to write the song when deeply homesick for Henrietta part of the way through this tour. All he could picture was a Virginia summer, the cicadas buzzing and the balmy, drowning heat weighing him down. He’d never even thought to imagine what Adam would see and he suddenly felt the chill of the coming autumn even though it was August.

“Every minute is a mile,” he blurted, the words coming from the mixture of homesickness and stupidity over Adam, “I’ve never felt so hollow.”

“Calm down, edgelord,” Ronan scoffed, though his drumming had stopped and he’d taken to pulling at the leather bands on his wrists.

“Don’t be an ass.” Blue snapped, annoyance anything but hidden from her face.

She and Ronan hardly sniped at one another anymore, the original jealousy he’d felt towards her and Blue’s weariness of him wearing off quicker than both Gansey and Adam had predicted. They were two sides of the same impossible coin but Blue had no patience for how callous Ronan could be when pushed to close to real emotions. Both of them felt everything stronger than any of the others but where Ronan retreated into anger, Blue unapologetically leaned into whatever emotion was overcoming her.

Adam kept strumming while Blue glared at the side of Ronan’s head. He hadn’t so much as looked in her direction and Gansey could tell the lack of response was infuriating her further. He was about to cut in since Adam was clearly going to let them run their destructive course but then, with his eyes still glued to his own violent tugging, Ronan spoke, so low it could’ve been to himself.

“I’m an old abandoned church, with broken pews and empty aisles,” he murmured perfectly in tune to Adam’s guitar, his wounded voice masked with gasoline. Ronan’s silence was loudly daring Blue to drop a match on his words but she just kept staring at him, impossibly softened by his words.

Without any ceremony, he quickly lifted himself from the floor and shoved his drumsticks into his back pocket in one fell swoop. He was out and off the bus before any of them could open their mouths. Adam’s strumming had stopped the second Ronan moved so when he got up to follow him, Gansey wasn’t surprised.

“Fuck.” Blue sighed, “I didn’t mean to- he can be such a dick sometimes that I forget that he’s… Ronan.”

Gansey knew the feeling. He’d spent so much time with Ronan before his father's’ murder that Ronan… now was still someone that caught him off guard from time to time. Ronan now was still as hopeful and creative and playful but you had to get through the barbed wire and venom to see it.

“You’re not alone in that, Jane,” Gansey let his hand slide across the carpet so he could squeeze at her fingers, “Don’t beat yourself up about it. He’ll come around and you guys will be dicking around again in no time.”

She smirked, “If Ronan were in here, he’d make fun of you saying ‘dicking around’ somehow but I’m not as clever with dick jokes.”

Gansey scoffed but didn’t hide the fondness from his features. He reached backwards for Adams guitar and started playing the song through again.

As the lyrics played over in his mind, he zoomed in on each of their different pieces of the song, what Henrietta and being away meant to them. Adam’s silent regret about not leaving his parents home sooner even though he knew it had been the right call, the only call. Gansey’s longing for the home he’d finally found after years of searching. Ronan’s broken grief wrapped up into a prayerful metaphor.

And then there was Blue. After a particularly bad spat with Orla, she’d had to come to terms with the fact that her cousin was right. Blue and her boys, as Orla had put it, were impenetrable. It had been a miracle that the five of them had accepted Henry into their patchwork family. They didn’t let anyone close other than each other. The downside of growing together is that if you weren’t there when the seeds were planted, you were lost to bloom on your own. It may end up sounding harsh and exclusive but that’s what you get when you make a family out of maladjusted, neurodivergent kids.

Gansey hated to think of it but, in the end, it all came back to him. He grew up with Ronan, had known him his whole life. He’d met Adam and Noah in high school and, despite Adam’s immediate misgivings about Ronan, Gansey had brought them all together. He was even the one to bring Blue into the band when he’d went to talk to her at the bar. He was the only commonality in each situation.

There was no way that he could be doing this if it wasn’t with them. No way he could be laying his heart bear for the world to see if he didn’t have each other them by his side, if he didn’t have Henry and the Vancouver Kids on this tour.

“My secrets for a buck, watch me as I cut myself wide open on this stage cause I am paid to spill my guts.” Blue was staring at him, he could feel her eyes and he tried to will the heat out of his cheeks, “I won’t see home till spring. Oh, I would kill for the Atlantic but I am paid to make girls panic while I sing.”

Blue giggled at the last line and he couldn’t help but laugh at himself. Yes there was no one else he could picture being here with.

**Author's Note:**

> The fic title and the song they're writing is I Will Play My Games Beneath the Spinlight by Brand New.
> 
> (But imagine it being less Lacey punk and more Lumineers folk-rock in ganseys voice)
> 
> I'm brownbluesargent on Tumblr x


End file.
